Thank You & Goodbye

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You! To so many people I cannot even name you all. It is so many of you that have helped me to get to this trip to India I will be leaving on Saturday. I will be spending 2 weeks with Off the Mat, Into the World as we work with numerous organizations to combat sex trafficking in India. It was over a year ago I decided to take this journey of raising $20,000 while educating about sex trafficking and inspiring others. I had never made $20,000 in a year in my life with any job I have had so this was an amazing feat raising over $23,000. I donated my yoga classes I taught, the kirtans I sang, held 2 humongous garage sales, sold items, begged, harassed, and pleaded. Once I set out to do it, I wasn’t going to stop, but let me tell, you I had my doubts.

Just as promised, I found support in places I never expected. A woman found my post on my website and donated over $1000, a mom of an acquaintance that had just watched a documentary about human trafficking, someone meeting me and hearing about the project for the first time, a teenager I had never met. And also as promised, places I expected to get support, I did not. Back home in Ohio, barely a soul cared. Fundraisers were fruitless, donations barely a one. I think this was the hardest part of all. It wasn’t that I needed that money in the end and they let me down, it was the lack of support. I felt they didn’t care about the cause and they didn’t care about me. But in the end, it wasn’t that experience that stuck with me the most, it was all the people and all the ways others DID support me and my work. It wasn’t just the monetary donations that meant the world to me but also lending tables, lending time, donating items for the garage sale, volunteering to help on various tasks, asking me how the project was going, words of support and encouragement, hugs. The community that has grown around this experience has been amazing. I have been wondering how I will continue to grow this amazingness without the Global Seva Project? I will figure it out!

Now, I leave in a few days. A few sets of clothes in my backpack, various items to help prevent and treat food borne illness, my yoga mat, and an open mind and heart for an adventure like no other I have had before. I will leave my family for 3 weeks. I have amazing friends supporting caring for my kids and an amazing husband who has been my biggest cheerleader from day one when I sat him down and told him he may want 2 beers to hear what I was up to with this Global Seva Project. I will work with girls and women who have been through the unimaginable. I will hold space for their story. I will acknowledge them as important human beings. I will witness their strength. I will hope to come back and be able to tell their story and do it justice. I will also be painting and moving and building and dancing and teaching yoga and learning to make jewelry but somehow I don’t think that its what will be what touches my heart.

Without you all to inspire, contribute, lift and love me, I would not be going to India. I go, already different from this journey of the past year. Learning to ask for help and how to inspire and lead too. I know I will come back changed again. I look forward to sharing with you where the next stretch of this journey will take me.